Running at the Old Vic Theatre until 25 May 2013
This is a play about right and wrong, but also about our petty judgements of others. The summary on the Old Vic’s website is as follows:
Driven by a passionate belief in justice whatever the personal cost, Arthur Winslow sets out to prove his son’s innocence when he is accused of theft. This moving story pits the rights of the individual against the will of the state. A fight for truth, played out under the media spotlight, tests one family to its very limit.
While an accurate outline of the plot, there is much more to this play than a fourteen year old supposedly stealing a postal order. The review in The Observer was notably short-sighted in what it described, though quite rightly pointed out one of the star acts – “Peter Sullivan is outstanding as the barrister Sir Robert Morton – especially in his hilariously mechanical way of accepting compliments.” One example that stays in my mind is this -
Catherine: I’m afraid I have a confession and an apology to make to you, Sir Robert.
Sir Robert: Dear lady, I’m sure the one is rash and the other is superfluous. I would far rather hear neither.
Each character in this play seems to have a hidden agenda – first Catherine, a suffragette, who seems to be fighting for justice because she enjoys fighting, next Dickie, who wastes away his father’s money ‘studying’ at Oxford and learning the ‘Bunny hop’, Sir Robert, aspiring to be a celebrity solicitor and possibly Lord Chief Justice, and lastly Arthur Winslow, clinging on to Edwardian values and resisting change of any kind. But the impressions given off in the early scenes entirely belie the characters’ true motives. By the conclusion of the story, there is a strong sense of duty and dignity to each person on stage.
The strongest points of this production, aside from the beautiful and elegant set, the tempo and timing, are the touching and subtle changes in each of the actors’ performances. Naomi Frederick as Catherine Winslow is one of the central characters, always involved in the action as a go-between for her father Arthur, Ronnie, the wronged boy in question, and Sir Robert, the one hope for justice, and in this role as internal liaison, her reactions to each person and event jump from one extreme to the next. It would be an easy role to play slapstick or sarcastic, but Ms Frederick is a very measured figure, filled with rightful indignation and fury one moment but equally soft and compassionate the next. At the beginning of the play she hates Sir Robert for his stance on trade unionism – the verbal sparring between Ms Frederick and Mr Sullivan was a fearsome thing to behold – but her view of him alters as she sees him change also over the course of the court case, until they are equals.
The play was inspired by an actual event, which set a legal precedent: the case of Stonyhurst College alumnus George Archer-Shee, a cadet at Osborne in 1908, who was accused of stealing a postal order from a fellow cadet. His elder brother, Major Martin Archer-Shee, was convinced of his innocence and persuaded his father to engage lawyers. The most respected barrister of the day, Sir Edward Carson, was also persuaded of his innocence and insisted on the case coming to court. On the fourth day of the trial, the Solicitor General accepted that Archer-Shee was innocent, and ultimately the family was paid compensation.
I subsequently found out that, at the age of 19, George Archer-Shee was killed in World War I at the First Battle of Ypres. His name is inscribed on the war memorial in the village of Woodchester, Gloucestershire, where his parents lived; on the memorial plaque outside the Catholic St Mary on the Quay church in Bristol city centre, where he had been an altar boy; and on Tablet 35 of the Menin Gate in Ypres, as he has no known grave.
The Winslow Boy was written in 1946, shortly after the end of World War II, and the story at first does seem a storm in a teacup, especially in comparison to what its audiences would have recently experienced. However, that is the genius of Terence Rattigan’s writing — the play at its base focuses on an underdog, fighting the powers that be in a seemingly hopeless struggle for what is right, while also passing sharp comment on the ways in which society has come to make instant and often false impressions of others.
It goes without saying, of course, that the Old Vic is a wonderful environment for this story, and the cast a very strong and talented crew. I will not attempt to criticise the technical aspects of the production, as I do not have enough experience to pass comment, only to say, it was seamless and thoroughly enjoyable, and if you have some pocket money and a free night in your schedule, there is nowhere else you should be.
